Recent Whole Foods shortages surprise SF shoppers

The Whole Foods store on Stanyan Street in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood had empty shelves on the weekend, which seems to be a recent pattern.

The Whole Foods store on Stanyan Street in the Haight-Ashbury...

Karma Quick-Panwala walked out of a San Francisco Whole Foods on Thursday without the family’s go-to milk brand. Her husband drinks chai milk just about every morning, she said, and uses milk from the Straus Family Creamery to make it.

In addition, when she made an Instacart order this week, five items she wanted — including her favorite milk — weren’t in stock at Whole Foods, so she got substitutes, she said.

“It’s been kind of surprising to see entire sections of food just completely gone from the shelves,” Quick-Panwala said outside the retailer’s Franklin Street location.

Shoppers on both coasts have said some of their favorite items were missing at Whole Foods locations in what some have attributed to Amazon’s acquisition of the company last year. Others have blamed a new inventory organization system.

San Francisco shoppers say they’ve noticed some scarcity in supplies this week, but on Thursday shelves seemed normally stocked at three San Francisco locations: Franklin Street, Fourth Street and Stanyan Street.

One store leader at Franklin Street, who said employees were not authorized to speak, said that the shortage seemed to mainly affect East Coast locations.

But San Francisco resident Isabelle Beekman said outside the Franklin Street store that she spoke to management to complain about a shortage of Clover Milk after Christmas. They directed her to Whole Foods’ central customer services in Austin, Texas, which redirected her to the local branch, she said.

“I assumed it had something to do with Amazon, but I could be wrong,” she said.

Beekman started noticing Clover Milk reappear after her complaint, she said, but now some produce has been sparse.

“Spinach seems to be hard to get ahold of,” she said outside the store Thursday. “They didn’t have it today. They didn’t have it Monday.”

A Whole Foods employee at another San Francisco location, who declined to provide a name, said the shortages started after Amazon bought the chain in August. Along with changing prices, the organization has cut out some “smaller products,” the employee said.

Russell Kowick stood outside the Whole Foods location on Stanyan Street with a few brown bags beside him. Kowick said he’s been shopping for other people’s groceries as an Instacart employee for a week and noticed a couple of coveted vegetables missing from the shelves.